Jobless Claims Hit 5.5 Year Low

by Christopher Freeburn | August 1, 2013 10:30 am

[1]On Thursday, the Labor Department announced that first-time claims for unemployment benefits[2] dropped to 326,000 last week.

That was down 19,000 from the prior week and easily beat the 345,000 new jobless claims that economists were expecting. Last week’s initial unemployment claims were the lowest since January 2008, Bloomberg noted.

The government revised the prior week’s claims up slightly from an earlier estimate of 343,000 claims, to 345,000 new claims.